Safe & Sound
by Nikkel
Summary: The journey is over, but the war inside will never be. Ellie and Joel struggle with adjusting to a new life in Jackson, but at least they have each other, through tears and laughter. One-shot collection. Father/daughter relationship. Post-game.


**Safe & Sound  
**(c) to Naughty Dog  
_Nikkel_

* * *

Stay low. Keep quiet. Endure. Survive.

These were the words beating in time with her racing heart. Ellie peered around the corner, crouched, knife in hand. She held her breath, watching the clicker shuffle towards her. She could wait this out. She knew it. She had been in tougher situations, tighter spaces, closer calls. She could never get over, though, the fear that choked her insides.

The clicker righted away from her. She took a step out into the open, her foot crunching on the dirt beneath her. She froze. Thankfully, it was not loud enough to grab the clicker's attention. She took another step, and then and another, and she was almost against the other wall when her outstretched foot kicked a glass bottle.

The clicker screamed and turned on her, lunging for her neck and she plunged the knife into it's torso. Her back hit the ground as its fangs dripped orange slime onto her face and she stabbed it again, and again, and again, hot blood streaming down her hands.

"Die!" she yelled. "Die! Die, die, die!"

And suddenly the fungus transformed into an older man, one with sallow cheeks, a pointed chin, and dark eyes that only held greed and violence and everything painful in the world.

"I can't die, little girl," David grinned, hands clenched around her throat, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. "I'm here with you forever."

"Get off me, you fucker!" Ellie screamed, but her voice was hoarse, her hands weak. He held her down and she couldn't breathe and there was blood everywhere. She stabbed him again and again, but it did nothing. "Get off! Get off!"

She bolted up with a roar, throwing him off, knife stabbing the air.

It was only moments later did she realize that none of that had actually happened.

Ellie was sitting up in bed, knife still in hand, her covers tossed aside. She was in her room. Her room in Tommy's house. In Jackson. Far and away from that lakeside resort that she wished she had never found.

Cold sweat trickled down her neck. She panted, as if she had been fighting... _him _off. She set the knife down next to her. The blade was clean, glinting in the moonlight, even. After all of her adventures, she never slept without it now.

"It's okay, Ellie," she said aloud, trying to regain her sense of place. "Just a bad dream."

But all of it was just too real. The sneaking around, the clicker, the attack, his hands around her throat, his menacing voice...

Her room was stuffy. She needed fresh air.

She set her knife on the nightstand beside her bed and opened the door. The entire house was dark and quiet on this night. Even Tommy and Maria's newborn son is asleep. Ellie walked down the hallway, stopping before Joel's bedroom, the door slightly ajar.

"Joel?" she whispered, pushing the door open wider. He was not inside. "Where are you?"

She made her way into the front room. A golden glow flooded through the window and spilled across the floor from the porch light outside. The locks on the front door were undone. She opened it.

"Shit!" Joel exclaimed, leaping up from the rocking chair, but relaxed when he saw her. "Oh, it's you."

"Sorry," she said.

He shook his head and collapsed back into the rocking chair, laying his rifle across his lap. "It's okay."

He took a swig of something in brown bottle. "What are you doing up?"

Ellie shrugged. She sat down on the wooden porch, cross-legged, elbows on her knees. "Couldn't sleep. You?"

"Same."

He took another swig of the bottle. They spent a moment in silence, gazing out at the newly-built neighborhood of Jackson, as quiet as the house inside. Stars twinkled in the night sky aside a crescent, silver moon. Warm, summer wind rustled through the leaves of the trees surrounding the town. It was peaceful. Calming.

Joel grunted and cleared his throat. "I have 'em too, y'know."

Ellie looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes - normally so hard and determined - are soft and watery.

"The nightmares," he said.

"I know," she replied. She watched as he took a third swig from the brown bottle. "What are you drinking?"

"Whiskey," he replied with a slight slur, wiping his upper lip. "Not for you."

"C'mon, please?" she said with a smirk. "Just once."

"What did you dream about?" he asked, and her smile fell. He regretted asking, because she had that look in her eyes, and he knew without her needing to reply. He handed her the brown bottle, the cork open. She looked up at him, confused, but took it. "Here. Just one sip. That's all."

She sniffed it before trying it. It reeked like poison, but she swigged it like Joel had. Fire scorched her insides and she coughed, setting the bottle down so hard it almost spilled over, and she gagged, tears blotting her eyes. Joel leaned over and gave her a hearty pat on the back, and she wiped her lips, gasping for air.

"D-Dammit," she croaked. "Coulda given me a warning."

"I did," Joel replied, and picked up the bottle again.

She closed her eyes. The whiskey spread through her chest and everything in her relaxed. No wonder he was drinking that stuff.

"Joel?"

"Hmm?"

"Are we safe?"

He paused before replying. The rifle sat in his lap, loaded, as if the secure, walled town they were in was going to be attacked in the middle of the night. The pistol sat in the back of his jeans. A shiv was even on the inside of his boot, and his backpack tucked behind the rocking chair. He was prepared.

"I don't know," he replied. He wanted to comfort her. Tell her that yes, they were safe, but he couldn't lie. No... No...

"Oh."

"I think we are. Unless God gives us reason not to be."

They said nothing more that night. Instead, they watched the sunrise.


End file.
